The racial character of American slavery and the commitment to white supremacy fostered a widespread antipathy toward race mixture in southern society. Whites feared that sexual relations between blacks and whites, if not controlled, could undermine the institution of slavery and the racial order. Children of mixed European and African ancestry, in particular, blurred the sharply demarcated boundaries between the races essential to slavery in the South.

The restrictive policy toward intermixture that emerged before the Civil War, however, was not all-encompassing. Miscegenation laws sought not so much to eliminate interracial sexual contacts as to channel them. Those in power employed these laws, as well as laws against fornication and adultery, mainly to keep white women and black men apart. The legal process exhibited a degree of toleration for white males who had sexual relations with black females, as long as the liaison was kept casual and discreet. This sort of illicit intercourse-between men of the higher-status racial group and women of the lower-reinforced rather than challenged the existing system of group stratification in the South…

…Maryland's miscegenation law, in short, was directed primarily at white women, black men and, their mulatto offspring. Recognizing that only the reproduction of "pure white" children of white women could maintain the fiction of a biracial society, the legal system was particularly determined to keep white women from interracial sexual unions. This preoccupation, combined with the custom of lumping mulattoes and blacks into the same category, provides a crucial insight into the social and legal construction of reproduction. Under the social rules that operated in the South, a white woman could give birth to a black child-thus the need for strict legal regulation of her sexual behavior. But under the same rules, a black woman could not give birth to a white child. Such a construction of reproduction clearly served the interest of white men in the South, allowing them to roam sexually among women of any color without threatening the color line.

A similar thrust characterized miscegenation legislation in Virginia. The colony's assembly decided in 1662 that interracial fornication demanded special penalties; the fine it imposed for this crime was twice that stipulated for illicit intercourse between persons of the same race. Legislators moved at the same time to clarify the status of mulatto offspring of interracial unions. Declaring that the child of a black woman by a white man would be "bound or free only according to the condition of the mother," the assembly broke with English common law, which stated that the status of a child followed that of the father. Virginia lawmakers thus ensured that the transgressions of white men would lead to an increase in the population of the slave labor force, providing a powerful economic incentive to engage in interracial sex even as criminal sanctions were imposed for such behavior. To say the least, this new legislation delivered a mixed message to white males…

…The fact that mulatto children derived their status from their mother also helps explain why southern lawmakers struggled to prevent sexual relations between white women and black men. Although mulatto children of black female slaves were subject to enslavement, mulatto offspring of white females could no be placed in slavery. The free mulattoes threatened the racial caste system ideologically, if not practically, because their presence could lead to the blurring of the distinction between slave and black, on the one hand, and free and white on the other…

March 1-3, 2018 at the University of Maryland, College Park
Deadline: August 18, 2017
Notification: Early September 2017

Conference Description:Resisting, Reclaiming, and Reimagining, the next Critical Mixed Race Studies conference seeks to highlight resistance against white supremacy around the globe, the reclamation of community, kinship, and identity within the mixed-race community, and the reimagining of racial difference. The conference will be hosted at the University of Maryland, March 1-3 2018 and will include film screenings and a live performance showcase produced by Mixed Roots Stories. Recent events demonstrate that white supremacy, coupled with sexism, xenophobia, transphobia, homophobia, and unchecked capitalism, is still central as an organizing principle and tool of domination. For example, borders and walls (both real and imagined) are being invoked by the current United States administration to marginalize people and combat the inevitable demographic shifts which will see this country become majority minority. By focusing on the resistance, reclamation, and reimagination of multiraciality, this interdisciplinary and transnational conference will be a forum dedicated to fostering relationships between people of color, dismantling racial hierarchies, and affirming an ethics of love to subvert dominant paradigms of social identity.

Proposals: CMRS welcomes submissions from scholars from all fields, cultural workers, and activists and invites posters, panels, roundtables, and individual papers that address the conference theme in a broad sense. Presentation formats may be varied and diverse, and we welcome proposals that involve poetry, visual art, storytelling, and other non-academic formats. Although not limited to these examples, proposals might explore the following:

A proposal from the social sciences might describe epistemological frameworks that center multiraciality and reclaim the heterogeneity of the mixed experience.

In the humanities, presenters might share how dominant cultures drive cultural norms and how this informs the global mixed experience.

Community activists and/or scholars engaged with the public may share how social justice work operates between and across minority communities.

Historians might explore legacies of revolution and resistance shaping the mixed experience in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and beyond.

Artists may share important works that decenter whiteness and reimagine social norms of identity.

IMPORTANT: Presenters at the conference must be members of the CMRS Association. Membership must be renewed annually and is available here. Presenters must be available to present on any of the 3 days of the conference.

Members of the CMRS Program Committee will be reviewing abstracts based upon the quality of the proposal. UMD class/meeting rooms are equipped with a Dell laptop, microphone and projector. Mac laptop users will need to provide their own projection adapters. Please note that all abstracts are to be submitted online using the CMRS form located here.